Ledger Posting: Meaning and Steps

Children are always taught by their parents about the significance and effectiveness of keeping track of the money spent. It will be easier if whatever transactions, income, expenditure, profit, loss, bank statements and all are recorded, categorized and “shelved” by each individual for being financially constructive. 

In industrial or professional settings, such recordings gain utmost prominence since money matters a lot, as so is equivalent properties. 

Here, the ledger comes to play. 

The word “Ledge” means “shelf”. And from there the word “Ledger” was derived. 

Ledger is basically a record of such important transactions that take place. A deeper look at ledger and ledger posting is discussed here. 

The way towards bookkeeping contains a few significant advances. Initially, we need to ledger all exchanges in a particular configuration in an accounting journal. Following that, we need to move these individual entries to ledger accounts. Accountants allude to this procedure as ledger posting.

Features of Ledger

Some of the features of a ledger account are:

1. Classification

The first significant attribute of the ledger is the order of monetary exchanges. The purpose of ledger accounts is to characterize the exchange into accounts. The ledger contains various accounts. Every budgetary exchange is grouped into these accounts. 

2. All accounts

The ledger contains all accounts such as purchase account, sales account and so forth. In other words, the ledger is a book or register, which contains all accounts. Accounts are opened in the ledger both at the hour of the beginning of business (desire bases) and during the year (need bases). 

3. Significant Information

One of the features of the ledger in accounting is holding applicable data in a single spot. For instance, the exchange with client A can be found in the general ledger of Mr A. This account would mirror all the exchanges of Mr A. 

4. Mix-up Tracking

Among other features of the ledger, optimizing data is the one. This is extremely useful for mistake rectification. For instance, when a purchase is exaggerated, at that point in a perfect world, the bookkeeper would survey the purchase accounts following the slip-up.

5. Trial Balance 

PreparationTrial Balance is removed from the closing balance of General Ledger. In this way, the ledger assumes a significant job in the readiness of fiscal reports. Trial balance extraction is the initial move towards the arrangement of budget reports with both journal entry and ledger entry.

6. General Ledger and Subsidiary Ledger 

The general ledger is utilized by small scale associations and contains all accounts of budgetary things, while auxiliary ledgers are kept in the huge association as a memorandum ledger which contains the individual account of clients and creditors. General ledger likewise contains total accounts for these things. These were some of the features of the ledger.

Importance of Ledger

The importance of ledger is described in the following:

• Figuring of Profit/Loss: Its planning is an inescapable advance for any association for computing the situation of profit or loss in their business since it is difficult to make further accounts without getting ready pertinent ledgers.

• The Definite Situation of an Account: It refers to the situation of the accounts whether they have a remarkable or owing balance at the hour of shutting the ledger. 

• Time Saver: As all the entries are recorded in one spot, it gets simpler and efficient while getting further accounts ready, for example, trading, profit and loss accounts.

• Imperative: One importance of ledger is that it encourages in keeping up the rightness or precision of the exchanges held during the life expectancy of the organization.

Advantages of Ledger

Some of the advantages of the ledger are:

• It is the ledger through which effective use of the double-entry system of accounting is guaranteed. Every single transaction is partitioned into two sections – collector and supplier – and recorded in the two concerned accounts in the ledger. 

• Exchanges identifying with various people or concerns are recorded in the account of every individual or concern independently. Therefore, complete and reliable data is accessible in regard to every single account. 

• Various kinds of income and expenses are recorded in various accounts independently. Thus, it is conceivable to learn the measure of income and expenditure under each head and the general outcome at the year-end through trading and profit and loss accounts.

• A separate account is opened for every detail of assets and liabilities. It is, in this manner, conceivable to find out the estimation of various assets and liabilities and the genuine budgetary situation at the year end through the company balance sheet.

• Exchanges being recorded in the journal last longer in the ledger and the chances of mistakes and defalcations are distant. 

• One of the advantages of a ledger includes that significant data and measurements are gathered from the ledger and provided to the administration to empower them to run the whole thing proficiently.

Disadvantages of ledger

• There are chances of the ledger being totally unsafe if someone else gets access to the book or system file. If the user is careful, then the ledger is way safer.

• You will have to keep a constant eye on the ledger files as they can contain very serious and sensitive files along with other such information.

• Ledger depends on the transaction data entered in it. If an error occurs in the transaction data, the entire results will have an error and will thus become undependable. 

• The ledger will take a lot of users’ time and energy. It is also difficult as we have to keep a check if our records are safe or not, also.

The provided information is totally useful for the students and will give a clear understanding of the ledger and ledger posting.